The Great Acting Blog: “Disciplined Playfulness – Michel Simon In Jean Renoir’s Boudu Saved From Drowning”
Michel Simon plays Boudu, a Parisian tramp who attempts suicide by jumping into the Seine, only for his effort to be thwarted when a local bookseller rescues him. The bookseller brings Boudu into his household, giving him a place to stay as well as a good wash and a smart suit. In gratitude, Boudu wreaks havoc for the bookseller and his family.
Simon’s performance is one of the finest examples in all cinema of organic acting, full as it is of unusual moments which could only be the result of true spontaneity, true in-the-moment creation. Simon delivers some extraordinary facial expressions and makes very strange sounds throughout the film, which come about because Simon allows his mind to be flooded with creative energy. This energy then finds form and expression in the acting. However, Simon’s performance is far from chaotic, he never loses sight of the object of his creativity, namely expressing the scene at hand, he just seems to change up a gear, releasing more of that creative juice when necessary. Simon’s organic acting fuelled by bursts of creative energy, lend his work a playful quality, reminiscent of a child in it’s openness but possessing a professional discipline too.
Simon is perfectly suited to Renoir’s conception of the film [hardly surprising since they were regular collaborators]. Renoir could have gone down the sentimentalist route and shown a homeless man displaced in the home of a bourgeoisie, but who eventually learns the mores and manners and fits in, a sort of Pygmalion tale then. Instead, he offers us something subtly ironic: yes Boudu is displaced, but the point is he chooses to be, he’s not a victim, he declines to make himself fit in. The ruckus he causes in the bookseller’s home is conscious and intentional. He doesn’t give a fig for the fact that the bookseller saved his life and gave him a place to stay. What Renoir gives us then, is a series of scenes where Boudu grates against the polite lifestyle of the bookseller, all of which are perfectly suited to Simon’s intentionally playful style of acting. There is a scene where the bookseller is trying to read but Simon spits on to the carpet. The bookseller complains and tells him to spit into a handkerchief and put it in his pocket, to wit Simon replies that that would be even more disgusting than spitting on the carpet. In another scene, he deliberately tips his glass of wine over the dinner table, so the maid tosses salt on to the spillage. Simon asks her why she’s doing that, she replies “to bring out the wine”. In response, Simon tips more wine onto the table in order to, as he says, “bring out the salt”. Simon’s disciplined-playfulness fulfils the intentionally chaotic actions of Boudu beautifully.
There is one scene, near the end of the film, which just about sums it all up. Boudu, in top hat and tails, has just married the maid in a countryside ceremony. The party are drifting along the canal when Boudu capsizes the boat. Everyone rushes toward the dry, grassy banks to save themselves, everyone that is, except Boudu, who allows himself to drift down river. Finally, he gets out of the water and finds himself on a country road. He sees a scarecrow in a field and decides to rip it out of the ground. He carries it a few feet down the road before wrestling with it, stripping it of it’s clothing, then tossing it away, and continuing on his journey. There seems to be no other reason for doing this other than for the sheer pleasure of it. This pleasure, this play, is at the heart of Michel Simon’s performance of the Parisian tramp, Boudu, a performance made unforgettable because Simon, rather being scared of his creativity, revels in it.
